Friday, December 3, 2010

The first time I saw the Colbert Report almost five years ago, I disliked it. I don't remember if I didn't get the joke (of course I hate to admit that's even possible now), or just didn't like the fake stridency. I didn't watch it for very long before turning it off.

I still think the show is an acquired taste, and it's challenging to watch much of the time. It assumes a lot of knowledge of the pundits Colbert is parodying, as well as the events he discusses. But in a time full of outrageous stories, parody is sometimes the only possible response.

As was the case on last night's show when he took on white privilege in the context of the recent Congressional vote for compensatory payments to black farmers and native tribes.

The second segment of the show focused on the story of American Atheists' billboard on the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel:

Colbert noted that the Catholic League has responded with its own billboard on the other side of the tunnel:

Catholic League president Bill Donohue described the second billboard as a "counter-punch" to the atheist billboard, to which Colbert replied: "Just like Jesus says, if someone slaps you on the cheek, counter-punch!"

My comment on the two signs is that the atheist design badly lags the Catholic billboard (despite their use of an all-white holy family).

Here's my quick attempt at a design modification, ditching the Koch Antiqua font in favor of a sans serif that's more readable at a distance. I changed all the words to sentence case to simplify it visually, and made the one word they really wanted to emphasize (know) bold instead of all caps.

I've also decreased the size of the three kings and their camels to allow more room for the type and moved the star just a bit.

I guess the original design could have been worse, though. It could have been typeset in Papyrus.

5 comments:

I do appreciate you cleaning up the design. The earlier mess does reflect a profound lack of audience awareness. That deficit runs through the entire message, unfortunately. As an atheist, I find the whole approach wrong-headed. Sigh.

Profile

Third of four daughters, raised in a rural area outside of a small town. Now living in a moderately large city, making media and immersed in other people's media. Finally cleaning out the filing cabinet and loading its contents to the cloud.